Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 175: Between Obviousness and Oblivion

Chapter 175: Between Obviousness and Oblivion

I left the stele.

Not with a heroic gesture. Not with strength or solemnity. Just... I detached myself. Like one gently removes a hand that has rested too long on a lukewarm ember. Like waking from a dream without meaning to, still entangled in its colors, its burn, its tenderness.

I had no more questions at that moment.

No more screams.

No more strength.

Only that slow, instinctive, almost unconscious movement. A withdrawal. A gentle flight. A resignation. I left the stele... but it did not leave me.

It was still vibrating within me.

Not like a memory. Not like those images one sees again when closing the eyes, blurry, distant, harmless.

No.

It vibrated like thermal residue.

An invisible, yet burning imprint.

Like a memory of warmth left on my skin after a contact too long, too intense, too real. It hadn’t left. It had melted into me. Slid between the bones, into the hollow of the skull, along the spine, all the way into that rib cage still beating to its rhythm.

It was there.

In every fiber.

In every nerve.

In every fold of my flesh.

Not an image.

A remnant of fire.

A presence no longer visible, but that would never leave.

And I knew, without a doubt...

That I had just been marked in a place no one could ever reach.

I wanted to extinguish it.

To push it away. To bury it. To engulf it under layers of reason, of silence, of familiar lies. I wanted to erase it. Strike it from me. Pretend nothing had vibrated. As if nothing had passed through me.

I wanted to silence it.

Forbid its echo. Prevent it from beating still in my chest, from blowing still in my neck, from stirring something I wasn’t ready to face.

But I couldn’t.

It was inscribed too deeply.

Not like a thought.

Like a fire.

Like a new organ, grafted raw, and now living within me without my consent.

So, as usual in this cursed world...

I walked.

Because there was nothing else to do. Because staying still would have meant giving in. Because the silence behind me weighed too heavy. I walked without aim, without map, without desire. Just to hold on.

Faster.

As if movement could relieve me. As if the friction of my steps against that empty ground could make something fall from that vision clinging to my nerves.

Straighter.

Not out of pride.

Out of fatigue.

Because bending would have meant admitting I could no longer carry what it had left in me.

And in that walk, once again...

I tried to forget I had been touched.

The scenery around me was retracting.

It wasn’t collapsing. It was retreating. Slowly. Like a tired sea, like a thought fading. The islets grew thinner. They became finer, more fragile, rarer — as if their very presence was being questioned. As if the world doubted.

Doubted whether it should still carry me.

And I walked.

On this ground that was no longer really ground, amid this void that silently tightened around me. A shifting void, dense, almost conscious. It took the shape of a tunnel without walls. No borders. No defined limits. Just a series of floating, blurry, ethereal arches, like drawn by an unstable memory.

They were suspended.

Unreal.

Almost liquid at times, as if light struggled to decide on them. They undulated in a vibrant darkness, alive, not dead — a darkness that pulsed. That breathed. A darkness saturated with a contained breath, tense, on the edge of holding, on the edge of reclaiming.

And I felt like the whole world...

Was holding its breath to let me pass.

At the end of this tunnel...

There was something.

Not an object. Not a place. Not a light. Something. An impression. A density. Like a weight in the gaze even before there was any shape to fixate on. I had the intuition of a silhouette.

Yes.

I thought I saw a silhouette.

Standing. Motionless. Turned toward me. Or maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t looking at me. Maybe it wasn’t looking at anything. But its very presence seemed oriented — stretched toward me, like an invisible bow.

But it wasn’t a body.

There were no clear contours. No substance. No distinct shadow. It wasn’t flesh, nor a silhouette made of muscle, bone, skin. It was a presence.

Pure.

Undeniable.

Like a gaze in the dark. Like a truth in a dream. Like an expectation before words. It didn’t move. And yet, it reached me.

And I already knew...

That it was waiting for me.

And in it...

Something seemed to vibrate.

Not a physical vibration. There was no tremor. No light. No sound. Nothing visible. Nothing measurable.

It was subtler.

Deeper.

An emotional vibration.

A slow, silent shiver that didn’t belong to the material world, but that I still felt in my nerves, in my belly, in that blurry zone between throat and heart.

And that shiver...

It was familiar.

Intimate.

Indefinable.

Like a forgotten song one recognizes from the first note, without knowing where it comes from. Like a childhood smell. Like a hand never held, but remembered as loved. It was blurry. But it touched me. Straight. Sharp.

And I didn’t yet know why...

But I knew it wasn’t a coincidence.

There was in it...

A softness I recognized without being able to name.

Not a generic softness. Not kindness. A precise softness, ancient, carved somewhere in me, but whose name escaped me. It said nothing, didn’t move, didn’t call me — and yet, I recognized it. Like recognizing the scent of a home left long, long ago.

Its hair floated around it.

Slowly.

As if carried by an invisible water, or a breath from another world. They didn’t dance. They rested in the air, alive, calm, as if they knew there was nothing left to prove.

Its pale dress...

Brushed the ground without sound. Not white. Not colored. Just pale. Like washed by time, by light, by forgetting. It slid over space without disturbing it, like a mist veil touching memory.

And its hands...

Its hands crossed in front of it were of absolute peace.

Not tense.

Not nervous.

Not ready to act.

Peaceful.

Silent.

As if they held a secret, or waited for the world to quiet around them. And looking at them, I felt a knot in me... loosen. Just a little.

Its face...

No.

There was no face.

No sharp features. No contours. No gaze to hold onto. Just a shadow. A suspended blur, moving, as if light itself hesitated to draw it. An absence that still breathed. An absence that weighed.

It was like a dream.

Not just any dream.

One of those you touch with your fingertips, at the edge of sleep, just before rising. Just before waking. Just before everything fades. That fragile, precise moment when you know something was there — deeply, tenderly — but that you won’t be able to keep it.

And its face...

Stayed in that place.

Between memory and erasure.

Between obviousness and oblivion.

And maybe that’s why... it hurt so much to look at it.

I stopped short.

Like struck in the spine. A sudden tension, from nowhere, blocked my legs without warning. My heart sped up at once. Brutally. Irregularly. As if it were struggling against something invisible. As if it were trying to back away in my place.

For no apparent reason.

Or maybe...

Because of it.

— No...

A word escaped my lips.

Weak.

High-pitched.

Broken.

Almost childlike. Like a refusal slipped between two breaths, spoken without even knowing why. My voice didn’t know what it was saying, but it said it anyway. And my whole body trembled around that word.

I didn’t even know what I was refusing.

Not yet.

But I was refusing it.

With all my strength.

With all that remained of my skin, my pride, my vertigo. Because that blur scared me. Because that softness was too familiar. Because I sensed, without being able to prove it, that what followed would cost more than everything I had faced until now.

And yet...

I was no longer moving forward.

I wasn’t fleeing either.

I was there, taut like a bow, on the edge of a truth I wasn’t sure I could bear.